The author and illustrator who won a Pulitzer Prize for his graphic novel Maus—and significantly legitimized that literary form in the process—Art Spiegelman finally relented to his publishers' requests and allowed McSweeney's to produce this three-volume facsimile edition of three of his sketchbooks. Not that he's proud of them, as he explains: "A dim-witted busboy in a beatnik coffee shop yearns to be an artist so he too can score with the chicks. Before becoming a multiple murderer he tries his hand at sculpture, flailing desperately at a lump of clay while muttering: 'Be a nose! Be a nose!' This moment in Roger Corman's 1959 horror cheapie A Bucket of Blood is the most accurate evocation I've ever seen of my own creative process." Filled with random, inscrutable, often inexplicable drawings, these replicas faithfully duplicate very different notebooks from 1979, 1983, and 2007, and capture Spiegelman's restless creative energies. The set includes an additional illustrated booklet providing notes for the others, all bundled together with a printed elastic book band.